


Bokuto's Excellent, Totally Foolproof Plan To Save Christmas

by TottWriter



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ...i'm not sorry tbh, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Modern magic AU, gratuitous snow, technically College AU also, this is still highkey ridiculous i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TottWriter/pseuds/TottWriter
Summary: Christmas is approaching, and Bokuto is very much in the spirit of the upcoming season. But what’s this? His boyfriend/unofficial roomie isn’t?Well, Bokuto reasons that this is something which can’t be allowed. And when he realises that Akaashi must never have experienced the true joys of Christmas, he knows just what to do…whether Akaashi actually wants him to or not.





	1. Part the First

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greendoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greendoodle/gifts).



> So, this is my secret santa gift for [Cookie](http://greendoodle.tumblr.com/)! I...maybe...um, got a little carried away with this one. I hope that's okay!
> 
> It's also technically a sequel to _An Error of Cat-astrophic Proportions_ , but you really don't need to have read the other fic to understand this. Of course, if you _have_ read it and are wondering how this works given that it's um...not finished yet...fear not! Basically the only "spoilers" are things which hopefully everyone is assuming as inevitable given the tags on that fic.

Koutarou’s second year at University was better in every way than his first. For starters, his position as a starter on the university team was set more or less in stone from the off, and he’d managed to win favour with most of his professors by laying on what Kuroo tended to call a ‘charm offencive’ whenever he couldn’t keep up with the work. Then, too, was the fact that he’d managed to dramatically improve the quality of his accommodation, and his roommate didn’t seem to mind the fact that his boyfriend spent…well, to be honest his boyfriend spent more time in his apartment than his actual roommate did. Go figure.

Ahhh. His _boyfriend_. That was the best part about his second year, and he wouldn’t even dream of denying it. Keiji could probably have had his pick of universities—who was he kidding, he _had_ had his pick of them—but he’d chosen to attend the same one as Koutarou, even so. Koutarou didn’t especially care that Keiji claimed it was for the courses they offered. All that actually mattered was that after a near-eternal year spent at different schools in different towns, they had been reunited. And even better, they got to spend most nights together, curled up on Koutarou’s bed as a courtesy gesture to his ever-absent roommate in case he actually came home.

The spring and summer had rolled by, and Autumn was well-established enough that their evenings formed a steady, reassuring pattern which Kuroo had called ‘revoltingly domestic’ on more than one occasion. Well, he was probably just jealous, so that was fine.

“Man, I can’t believe it’ll be Christmas soon,” Koutarou muttered one afternoon, throwing his practice gear in a heap for the laundry. Keiji stripped off beside him, throwing his kit on the same pile.

“Please don’t remind me,” he said, grabbing one of Koutarou’s shirts and pulling it over his head. “Incidentally I am borrowing this. It’s far too cold to walk around shirtless. And please could _you_ put something else on, because I am sure no one on the team will be impressed if you catch a chill or end up straining a muscle because your body temperature was too low.”

“But Keiji, what about Christmas?” he asked.

“What _about_ it?” Keiji replied.

“We need to start making plans! I’m pretty sure it’ll be okay if we decorate, and we have to decide what to get for families—do we buy a joint present or is that too early—and you have to tell me what _you_ want!”

Keiji made the sort of face he usually reserved for telling stories about that one girl in his lectures who was always super disruptive and annoying.

“I _would like_ to forget about the whole occasion in its entirety. Surely you worked as much out during our time at High School together?”

Koutarou gaped. Keiji didn’t often actually surprise him these days, but when he did, it always seemed twice as shocking because they’d really had quite a long time and a lot of stupid shared experiences together in which generally he felt they’d gotten to know each other inside out.

“You…you _meant_ it?”

Keiji’s eyes narrowed. “I believe that is usually what happens when someone informs people of their feelings on a subject, yes, and I did make a point of repeating myself every year.”

“But it’s _Christmas_ , Keiji! Everyone loves Christmas!”

“Please consider me an exception then.”

For a solid minute or so it was all Koutarou could do to stare blankly in Keiji’s direction, hardly even moving when his boyfriend rolled his eyes and walked off. Keiji hated _Christmas?_

 

* * *

 

“Kuroo! Oh my god I have an emergency, you gotta help me!”

Koutarou clutched his phone so tightly that he was slightly worried he was going to crack the screen or dent the case or something, but honestly, how could people expect anything else under these trying circumstances?

“Look, it’s not that I don’t love you man, but isn’t this sort of thing exactly why you have a boyfriend? Go bother him, he ought to be your port of call,” came Kuroo’s reply.

“No you don’t understand!” Koutarou cried, leaning back so far he cracked his head against the wall. “Keiji _is_ the emergency!”

“Oh god what did you do to him now.”

Koutarou scowled at the phone. “ _Me?_ I really don’t think you have any right saying shit like that Kuroo, because—anyway that’s not important. You have to help me! I was asking Keiji about his plans for Christmas earlier, and he said he didn’t have any because he didn’t want to _make_ any. Kuroo, he really meant it! All this time I thought he was just trying to like, be modest or something because everyone on the team had a habit of going a little over the top, and okay there was that time with the sentient mistletoe, and—”

“Sentient mistletoe?” Kuroo asked, sounding altogether too keen.

Koutarou groaned. “Don’t ask. It was Konoha’s idea. If you really wanna know you can ask him, but I promise it’s not gonna end well because he hates being reminded about it almost as much as Keiji apparently really, _actually_ hates Christmas. What am I gonna _do?_ ”

“Listen, I really don’t think I’m all that qualified to help,” Kuroo said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’d _love_ to. It would be my pleasure to bring joy to the life of your boyfriend, who’s as sweet as a grapefruit and also probably still wants my blood for vengeance spells, but I’m actually gonna have to refuse.”

There was a pause. “Unless you have a plan or something, and when I say plan I mean a plan which doesn’t involve anything that’s either illegal or likely to drop me even further into Akaashi’s bad books than I am already.”

Koutarou grumbled, wishing Kuroo didn’t have so much of a point. “You know I’m pretty sure Akaashi’s forgiven you by now,” he muttered.

“Oh, really,” Kuroo drawled. “I’ll believe _that_ when I see it.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Keiji?” Koutarou asked that evening, arms wrapped around his boyfriend as the sat on the sofa watching…ehh, something. It didn’t really matter what. “You remember that time you were a cat for a week?”

“No, because nothing of the sort ever happened,” Keiji replied tonelessly, and Koutarou had to admit, he was pretty good at that. He hardly even flinched, even though normally when that was brought up, Kuroo was somewhere nearby with, like, a laser pointer or a bag of cat treats which he would rustle conspicuously in an effort to rile him up.

“Yeah okay I _know_ ,” Koutarou said, letting his thumb rub up and down gently on Keiji’s arm. “But I mean, that…that whole thing that never happened, it worked out okay in the end, right?”

Keiji drew a deep, slow breath, and exhaled for long enough that Koutarou was starting to worry a little bit by the time he stopped. His body went rigid.

“Bokuto, I have few rules,” Keiji said, and oh shit, Koutarou was in trouble now. “I don’t ask much from this relationship even though, when viewed objectively, the proportion of time we spend here in your room cuts far more into my studying time than yours and could be considered a distraction all the while we’re still at university. I am not someone who requires excessive or expensive displays of affection, and having halfway lived with you for several months now I am well aware of each and every one of your bad habits, which I am perfectly willing to tolerate. I even put up with the eclectic group of people you call friends despite having _legitimate_ grievances with some of them.

“In fact,” Keiji went on, still not meeting Koutarou’s eyes, “Really I have incredibly light and lenient demands of our relationship except for with this one particular issue. _Nothing_ happened to me at High School. You must be mistaken, or thinking of an alternate Akaashi Keiji, somewhere out there in a strange world where anything could happen, including you remembering that we’ve already had this conversation far, _far_ too many times. Now, please hand over whatever it is you or Kuroo found to torment me with this time.”

“I don’t have anything!” Koutarou cried, burying his face in Keiji’s shoulder. Man, sometimes his boyfriend could be so _suspicious_. “I just…it worked out okay in the end, right?”

Keiji still wasn’t looking at him, but he had at least relaxed a little at that. “Koutarou, do I want to know where this leads?” he asked.

“I just meant…well…I mean we probably wouldn’t be so close right now if it wasn’t for all that, right? So I know it was a bad thing—a really really bad thing in a lot of ways, I totally get it—but there were still some pretty good parts to it. I mean, you know, aside from you being a cat and sorta forgetting you were human for a little bit, and all that stuff.”

“Yes, aside from those _minor_ factors.”

But he relaxed against Koutarou, the stiffness melting into a soft embrace as he let his head rest against Koutarou’s. It was a comfy moment, and Koutarou would have been quite happy to let it go on for as long as he could reasonably manage, just as they were.

“I suppose there were some advantages, of a sort,” Keiji added after a few minutes though, and really there was no way for Koutarou to stay still after that. He rolled, pulling Keiji on top of him and almost startling a yelp out of his boyfriend as he did so. He could tell by the gasp and the way Keiji had his mouth clenched tightly shut. Drat. No mewing this time. He was never willing to court the ire he would incur if he mentioned how adorable he found the little habits like that which Keiji had picked up during the Incident at high school. But then, judging from how often Keiji managed to contain them, and how he had always been so observant about Koutarou, he’d probably worked it all out anyway.

But that was beside the point. Keiji had just admitted that there were _some_ good things. Or, he’d more or less implied it, at least, and that was just as good. It meant he all but had permission to start planning how he’d fix the whole Christmas thing, once and for all. It shouldn’t be difficult, now that he’d gotten the confirmation he needed that Keiji no longer hated any and all magic use. And who, exactly, could resist Christmas magic, anyway? All Keiji needed in order to learn how to enjoy the holiday was a taste of the joy which festivities could bring. Clearly he’d been missing out on it all so far, and how could he call himself a good boyfriend unless he fixed that?

 

* * *

 

“So, you’re sure he’s gonna be okay with this?” Kuroo asked, dumping another box down on the counter. “Because like I say, he still hates me from everything in high school, and I’d really like to keep earning back his good favour, rather than adding more black marks against my name. I mean, you _are_ still having me for best man if you ever get married, right?”

Koutarou frowned at him. “Keiji admitted there were some good things even about the cat situation, so he’ll be totally fine with all this, I’m sure of it. And who even says I _want_ a best man? You know, my little neighbour Takara has been angling to be maid of honour practically since she was born.” He blinked as the full meaning of what he’d just said sank in, and spluttered: “Wait _married?!_ Hol—now _hold on a minute_ Kuroo. That’s…that’s going a little bit far, right? I mean, we’re still students! We don’t even live together, or…or…and neither of us have jobs yet! We can’t get married! And I don’t even know if Keiji would ever—” He swallowed heavily, not wanting to finish that thought, just in case.

Kuroo grinned at him. “But you still would, wouldn’t you,” he said, resting his weight on the counter and folding his arms. He looked just as smug as he _always_ did when he managed to pull off a cheap shot during a match, or when he got his way moments after being told he’d never be able to. “I’m right, aren’t I.”

“You…you can shut right up Kuroo, because that’s not got anything to do with what we’re doing right now, which is teaching Keiji the true meaning of Christmas.”

“Ah yes, the true meaning of Christmas: enchanting most of your belongings so that they’re waterproof and then making it snow indoors. How could I forget.”

Koutarou had known Kuroo long enough to be perfectly aware of when he was attempting to provoke a reaction out of him, and they were on far too tight a schedule to allow for that sort of distraction. So rather than waste more time pointing out the obvious—that Kuroo _knew_ that wasn’t what they were doing, because he’d helped come up with the plan in the first place—he just grumbled a little as he started unpacking the boxes.

They were lucky that Keiji had lectures all day. Koutarou had made the executive decision to skip his own in aid of their mission—there were only a few more days until Winter Break _anyway_ , and almost all of his lecturers had started winding down the intensity of what they were teaching, safe in the knowledge that most of their students were only halfway paying attention at this point. Keiji was probably one of the few students who was actually still going, dutifully paying attention even when everyone else was discussing their plans for the holiday—especially the girl who was always annoying him so much.

Well, it wouldn’t be long before Keiji would have a good break too, Koutarou told himself. And really, he’d picked the perfect plan. Keiji clearly hadn’t ever had a proper Christmas the way Koutarou had, with a happy and exuberant family to surround him with love and attention. Actually, Koutarou had still only met one member of Akaashi’s family (after the whole cat thing he’d definitely given them a wide berth), and that was his little sister—who managed to be like an evil, even more calculating and rational version of Keiji. He still wasn’t quite sure how that was possible, but if that was Keiji’s little sister, he dreaded to think what their parents were really like.

The plan itself was delightfully simple, with no room for the sort of disasters which he and Kuroo were, sadly, rather capable of when it came to magical studies. This time, however, he’d gotten Kenma and Tsukishima to check over their planned incantations and charms for backfire potential, and been given the all-clear. There would be no accidentally turning people into cats—or anything else, for that matter—so how could Keiji possibly object?

Stage one of Operation Make Akaashi Love Christmas involved all the preparation, however, and it was definitely the most difficult and time-consuming part. A major component to any Bokuto family Christmas was eating home-made treats until everyone was just about ready to explode, which meant he had a lot of work to do, and not a huge amount of time to do it in.

He and Kuroo were halfway through the second batch of gingerbread when his roommate Iwaizumi walked in, took one look at the pair of them stood in the kitchenette up to their elbows in flour, and groaned.

“What’s going on _now?_ ” he asked, dropping his bag just inside his own bedroom door.

“It’s the plan to make Keiji like Christmas!” Koutarou said, grinning. “But you can have some gingerbread if you want. The first lot’s still cooling down, but we tried some already and it’s pretty good.”

Iwaizumi regarded them both with a sceptical expression. “Does Akaashi actually know what you two are doing?” he asked. “Because he’s never seemed like the sort of person who likes surprises to me.”

Koutarou shook his head. “He’s gonna find out later! I sort of got the all-clear to do something though, and I checked with his little sister the other day and she says he tries to hide it but he actually really loves snow, so really it’s all fine.”

Iwaizumi blinked at him, wearing the most confused expression Koutarou had seen on his face in months.  

“…Snow?” he asked, and then shook his head. “Actually, you know what, I think I’m probably better off not knowing. That way when they interview me afterwards I’ll have plausible deniability. I’m gonna grab my stuff and head out. I’d rather not be party to whatever’s going to happen next. Just try not to do anything _illegal_ , okay? I do still technically live here.”

Koutarou shrugged. “Well, if you really don’t want to stick around,” he said. “I mean, you’re gonna be missing out on a treat, but if you’re sure, you know?”

Iwaizumi smiled weakly. “I have to go see Oikawa, anyway,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be in the way of your… _surprise_ when I’m packing.”

Kuroo snorted. “I’m pretty sure what we’ve got planned would be _right_ up your boyfriend’s alley you know. Don’t blame us when he gets all jealous once the pictures get posted and he sees what he’s been missing out on.”

Iwaizumi dropped his smile and scowled. “For the last time: he’s not my boyfriend, and I wouldn’t stay here while you two cook up another disaster if you _paid_ me. Let me know when it’s all over—and if you get any flour on my stuff I’m going to skin you alive.”

“Boyfriends, lovers, casual fuckbuddies, it’s all the same to me,” Kuroo said casually. “I might not live here like Bokuto does, but I’m hardly blind you know.”

Face bright red, Iwaizumi strode past them, grabbing a few packets of snacks before heading back to his room. “I’m not coming back until New Year,” he announced. “You’d better have repaired all the damage by then.”

It was only a little while later, once Iwaizumi had dragged a substantial suitcase out of his room and down the exterior corridor away from the apartment, that Koutarou turned to Kuroo and said:

“You know, you don’t have to wind him up so much. Iwaizumi’s a pretty good guy. He never even complains when Akaashi stays over.”

“That’s because you’re right,” Kuroo said, rolling out the latest batch of gingerbread dough. “He’s a freaking saint. But honestly doesn’t that make you want to wind him up even more? And come on. I’ve _met_ Oikawa. If Iwaizumi can put up with that, a little bit of ribbing now and then is nothing, believe me.”

“I guess you have a point. And at least he didn’t tell Akaashi about the plan!”

“I think he was just glad he got out before you two became even more disgustingly sappy than you are already.”

Koutarou shook his head. He really couldn’t understand Kuroo sometimes. He and Keiji weren’t _sappy_ . Sappy was…was…well it was kissing and making a fuss, and Keiji _hated_ making a fuss. Really, the most they ever did was sit on the sofa together, and okay, so perhaps sometimes Keiji fell asleep on him, but he always carried him to his bed so he could get a proper night’s sleep if that happened, which totally meant it didn’t count.

Well, then again, Kuroo loved to wind people up, so there was every chance that was what he was doing again. It was something he could straighten out later, for sure. There were more important things to be getting on with.

“Okay, so I think that’s enough gingerbread,” he said, looking at the veritable mountain of biscuits on the counter. “The place smells great, too! Soon as this next batch finishes we ought to start on the onigiri, and then we gotta get the cakes and the other sweets and stuff out of here so we can set up the circles.”

“You’ve got this all planned out then, I see,” Kuroo remarked. “What are you doing for the chicken? You won’t be able to go fetch it later.”

Koutarou dusted the flour off his hands and beamed. “It’s all sorted, don’t worry. I looked up how to do the batter so I’m gonna make it fresh tomorrow. I did a practice run the other day to make sure it works and everything. We just gotta get the rest of the food done, and then draw the circles so they have time to get working, and then do the decorating…I can’t wait ‘til Akaashi gets here; this is gonna be great!”

 


	2. Part the Second

Akaashi Keiji rather felt he was a simple person, with simple tastes. All he wanted in life was to be left to his own devices—which often involved close proximity to his boyfriend, but honestly no one could blame him for that one. Koutarou had a warm and welcoming personality, and even before the side effects of his High School trauma had left him with a pervasive desire to cuddle up to warm things now and then, Koutarou was just the sort of person who  _ invited  _ emotional displays like that.

Really, it had been something of a miracle he’d held out as long as he had. 

Which wasn’t to say that he didn’t feel a little… _ wary _ . Koutarou was nothing if not exuberant, and ever since his noticeable dismay at Keiji’s wish to downplay the Christmas season, he’d been expecting some sort of attempt to change his mind. That nothing had happened so far didn’t reassure him in the slightest. He knew his boyfriend well enough to be sure that something was on the horizon. He just hoped that whatever it was wouldn’t be too traumatic.

As he made his way home from his last lecture on Christmas eve, he felt himself relaxing a little. After all, whatever it was, how bad could it be? Most likely he’d try to win him over with presents or by playing endless ‘festive’ music, and that would be a comparatively minor annoyance to deal with. Even if he’d decked the entire flat out like some sort of grotto…it would only be for a few days. He could live with that. 

And he wasn’t heartless. He’d worked out over the years how much Christmas meant to his boyfriend, and for all his posturing that he’d rather not think about it at all, he hadn’t forgotten to get him a gift. It was more the ancillary aspects of it which troubled him, anyway. Family. Festivities. Endless celebrations which were meant to be cheerful but which always,  _ always  _ ended up being trite and forced and deeply humiliating. Hideous jumpers and desserts set on fire—he still remembered the year that their Christmas dinner had been ruined by a sprinkler being set off in his Uncle’s apartment. He couldn’t even remember who’d had the  _ brilliant  _ idea to import the custom of serving the now-infamous Western dessert after their meal; just that they had made the fatal error of carrying it into the room directly beneath the smoke detector.  

Honestly, after being rained on; having glasses of wine spilled over him; being forced to entertain his younger sister year on year; enduring his extended family’s endless narcissistic small talk… And that wasn’t even starting on the trauma of his eighth Christmas, the year in which his father had ‘surprised’ him by dressing as Santa and using a size charm to come down the chimney—only to forget how recently the fire had been extinguished. A few seconds after landing directly on hot embers, the costume had caught alight, filling the air with the stench of burning synthetic materials and leaving an indelible mark on Keiji’s young and impressionable mind.

All in all, Keiji felt, Christmas was best forgotten. Forgotten and glossed over and shunted to the back of his mind in favour of celebrations with some comparatively  _ positive  _ memories associated with them.

He relaxed a little as he changed into clean clothes and fetched out his overnight bag, already packed with Koutarou’s gift and the things he would need for a couple of quiet days in front of the television. His parents had already mentioned that they were travelling abroad that year, visiting a cousin who had moved to Australia, so he was safe from any well-meant but unwanted interference on that front. The longer time went by without Koutarou ‘suggesting’ that he pack this or that, the more he felt quietly confident that they would not be making any unexpected visits to see anyone else, either. With any luck, he’d get away with a minor amount of fuss on what was otherwise shaping up to be a perfectly calm, ordinary weekend.

 

* * *

 

His first sign that he would not be getting a normal, quiet few days came before he even reached Koutarou’s apartment. Usually he would be able to hear music of some kind—Koutarou had spent half of December playing the sort of highly annoying and infectious Christmas tunes which lodged in your brain long after other, subsequent songs had tried and failed to replace them. 

It was cold, too. Was he imagining it, or had the heating gone out? If it had, he was going to have to uproot Koutarou and drag him back to his own dormitory, no matter how loud the protests. It wasn’t that he couldn’t  _ cope  _ with cold weather, but one of the lingering effects of a misadventure from High School was a strong desire to be warm whenever possible. Koutarou might have been a portable furnace, but body heat really only went so far.

By the time he reached Koutarou’s door, his breath was fogging in front of his face. That was definitely a bad sign. He knocked quickly. Perhaps if he helped pack they could leave before he actually started shivering.

Koutarou opened the door much, much faster than he’d been expecting; half covered in flour and glitter, and reeking of an assortment of spices.

“Keiji!” he cried, reaching out and dragging him forward into a hug so quickly that his face was squashed against his boyfriend’s chest. Ah yes, that was the distinctive whiff of ginger and cinnamon. Something was Afoot. 

“You’re early!” Koutarou went on, not loosening his grip. “Um, I didn’t think you were gonna get here just yet, so things aren’t quite ready, so…you gotta close your eyes before you come inside and whatever you do don’t open them, okay?”

Keiji groaned. Oh god, here it was. This was it, the disaster he had been waiting for. 

“Koutarou why do I need to close my eyes?” he asked. “Could it be that there has been some sort of misadventure and I am going to be highly disappointed?”

Koutarou’s arms wrapped around him even more tightly than they had before, sending flour up Keiji’s nose.

“Nope!” came the reply, spoken with far too much would-be innocence to be true. “Everything’s great Keiji, honest! It’s all...everything’s fine! Nothing to worry about!”

Keiji knew. He  _ knew _ , deep in his gut, that he was probably going to regret following the instructions he had been given.

“Oh, and leave your shoes on, okay?” Koutarou added, and that ought to have been the final straw, but he still had his arms around Keiji and he was  _ warm _ , and frankly he could have picked Keiji up without any particular difficulty and that was always a point in his favour…

Okay  _ okay _ , so Keiji was weak. He was weak, and Koutarou was his biggest weakness, right up there with warm places and small patches of sunlight, and the result of that weakness was that he didn’t even question why he was being asked to leave his shoes on as they walked into Koutarou’s apartment, or why Koutarou fetched a scratchy woollen hat from somewhere and pulled it down over Keiji’s face, telling him to keep his eyes closed as he span him round three times and then led him across the room towards Koutarou’s bedroom—Keiji’s sense of direction was too good to be fooled by a trick like  _ that _ . He didn’t even question why it seemed to take a little longer than usual; or the odd silence in the room; or why his feet were honestly freezing, even more so than his hands.

He was so weak that he thought nothing of it at all until Koutarou opened a door and they were met with a wall of even more intense cold, and the hand which Koutarou had left on his shoulder from guiding him across the room squeezed hard enough that it was painful even through all the layers Keiji still hadn’t managed to take off.

“Oh  _ shit _ ,” Koutarou said, his voice high and panicked enough that there was a slight squeak to his words.

Keiji’s eyes snapped open and even through the weave of his hat he could see what was wrong, because what was wrong was that there was no bedroom on the far side of Koutarou’s door.

He lifted the hat and gaped. No, there  _ definitely  _ wasn’t a lot of Koutarou’s bedroom on display, because what there was…was snow. A veritable blizzard in fact, and as he stared a gust of wind blew out of what ought to have been a small student bedroom and a flurry of flakes settled on his coat. 

“I…”

“It’s fine it’s fine!” Koutarou said, slamming the door closed. “It’s…it’ll wear off soon I’m sure!”

Keiji shook his head and pushed past his boyfriend to open the door again, because what he’d seen was the sort of thing which rather defied belief, and he wanted to be sure he hadn’t had some sort of minor hallucination and imagined the whole thing. No, no it was still there. Okay.  _ Okay  _ then. 

He blinked at the miniature snowscape before him. Or at least what ought to have been miniature—Koutarou’s room wasn’t large enough for it to be anything else, no matter  _ how  _ abnormal it was for there to be snow indoors to begin with—but against all reason, the longer he stared into the blizzard, the more his sense of perspective began to point out the fatal error with that assumption.

“Koutarou…you… Why is there a _ mountain range  _ in your bedroom?”

Koutarou winced, hanging his head with a kicked-puppy sort of expression on his face. “Well it sorta got out of hand,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “Kuroo and me drew the circle in there together, but it looked too small to really make all that much snow no matter  _ what  _ Kenma said, so we made it a bit bigger, but then… I mean, you know Kuroo is basically cursed. Any time he does magic it goes wrong! So after he left I figured It’d be safer if I scrubbed it out and started over because I  _ knew  _ I could do a better job. And well, I maybe made it a bit bigger again, and, um, I guess I accidentally turned my bedroom into the arctic, and now the living room’s heading that way as well, and—”

“It’s  _ what? _ ” Keiji snapped, turning around.

He gaped. Where the sitting area ought to have been were mounds of snow. In the corner by the television, the walls were blending into a collection of  _ pine trees _ . Above them, the ceiling was coated in frost, and a short way past the light took on an insubstantial, cloud-like appearance, as though it were melting into fog. There were patches of blue sky visible past where it warped into boreal forest, but the weather seemed to be closing in, and occasional flakes were already making their lazy way down to settle on the existing snowscape.

“You turned your student apartment into the arctic,” he said. A small corner of his mind marvelled that really, he couldn’t even bring himself to be entirely surprised.

“I  _ knooow _ ,” Koutarou wailed, clutching Keiji and resting his head on his shoulder. “It was meant to be a surprise, but it got totally out of hand, and—Keiji you’re shivering! Hold on, let me get you to the cabin!”

Keiji just had time to register how much that sentence  _ didn’t  _ make sense before Koutarou had literally swept him off his feet and started marching toward the kitchen. It took too long to get there. Of  _ course  _ it took too long to get there—just a few paces past the door to Iwaizumi’s room the hall turned into a forest track, lined with trees, and when they emerged onto an open hillside there wasn’t anything even remotely resembling the apartment in sight. What Keiji  _ could  _ see was a small log cabin, windows lit with a warm glow. Smoke rose from the chimney. It looked like something copied directly out of a tacky Christmas card, even down to the sunset and crisp, clear sky. The first stars were already visible high above the treeline. 

He looked back down the path—the  _ hallway _ . Sure enough, between the trees ran a familiar beige carpet, complete with the usual stains and litter, and the burn mark halfway along where Kuroo had thought it a fun idea to bring sparklers round for New Year and set them off indoors. 

“This part turned out really well though, right?” Koutarou asked, speaking softly into Keiji’s ear. 

Keiji turned back to the cottage in the snow. “ _ How… _ ”

But Koutarou didn’t answer and they were already off again, tramping through the snow and leaving deep footprints in their wake. When they reached the cottage, Koutarou set him down in order to open the door and then turned around. He had the brightest, most excited grin on his face that Keiji had seen in months. 

“Come on!” he cried, and grabbed both of Keiji’s hands, tugging him towards the doorway. “We’re letting out all the heat!”

Still too bewildered to actually resist, Keiji found himself half walking, half falling through the doorway. He gaped. Inside, the cottage was decked out with lights and decorations of all colours and shapes. Paper chains and garlands made from green plants criss-crossed the ceiling and hung in sweeping arcs along the walls. A tall pine tree stood in one corner, laden with tiny wooden ornaments and lights which twinkled and sparkled like stars. 

The bulk of the light came from a roaring fire, and candelabras in each window and across the mantle of a grand fireplace. In front of the fire was a thick rug, with armchairs either side and a sofa piled high with cushions. Against the wall opposite the fire, a narrow, ladder-like staircase led to an upstairs which couldn’t be all that large—the ground floor was scarcely big enough that a room would fit beneath the eaves. The air was filled with the rich scents of woodsmoke and gingerbread. 

“What do you think?” Koutarou asked, with such childish enthusiasm that Keiji couldn’t even bring himself to ask what the hell was going on any more. 

“It’s…” He trailed off, staring at the cottage interior. The longer he looked, the more little details leapt out at him: the mugs on the small coffee table by the arm chair, filled with some steaming drink; the table by the window set for two; the throw over the back of the sofa which was decorated with black and gold reindeer set against a white background. 

Koutarou beamed and grabbed his hand, leading him over to the sofa. “I know how you like being warm, so I got everything set up just right! There’s hot chocolate and plenty of food, and I can get more blankets if there aren’t enough, and no one’s gonna bother us because I’m  _ pretty  _ sure you can’t get mobile signal in wherever we are right now.”

It ought to have bothered him, really it should have. They were stood in…either some sort of magically expanded and transformed space, or an actual warp to a different part of the globe. There was no telling which at the moment though, because the interior of the cabin was so…so completely unexpected. The walls were decked with strands of coloured paper and bright foil decorations, laid over hangings which softened the wood they were made from. There were actual  _ holly wreaths _ hung in each of the windows, suspended above the sills just high enough that the candles could burn safely beneath them. Glass baubles woven into them reflected the flickering lights.

He was still staring as Koutarou led him to the sofa in front of the fire and tugged him onto the seat. And  _ god _ , it was warm, and soft, and Koutarou was sat right there, draping the throw around them both, with the fire crackling away in front of them. His surprise hadn’t lifted even when a warm mug was pressed into his hands: until he realised how cold his hands really were after their march through the snow. Halfway on autopilot he took a sip and melted against his boyfriend, overwhelmed enough that he couldn’t help but go along with it all.

“I don’t know what you did,” he mumbled, holding the mug close to his face to bask in the warmth. “I dare say I probably don’t  _ want  _ to know the details. But… _ this? _ ” He sighed contentedly. “This I don’t mind at all.”

The mood was rather spoilt by Koutarou’s subsequent hoot of delight, and his own frantic attempts to preserve his mug of hot chocolate as his boyfriend squeezed him so tightly he could barely breathe—but even that, really, was part of Koutarou’s charm. 

 

* * *

 

They sat together on the sofa for…a while. He didn’t particularly keep track. Long enough that the world outside the cabin’s windows turned pitch black, and the fire started to die down to embers, at least. Keiji was halfway asleep in Koutarou’s arms when movement stirred him.

“Oh, I woke you?” Bokuto asked, a fraction louder than Keiji would have preferred considering how close together they were. 

“I wasn’t asleep… _ yet _ ,” he grumbled, pulling the throw tighter around himself. “I might have been soon, though, if you hadn’t  _ moved _ .”

Koutarou’s face fell, but not for long.

“Hey that’s good though! You can’t fall asleep yet Keiji! It’s…it’s still a few hours until Christmas!” He froze, mouth opening and closing a few times. “I…I mean—I know you don’t like it, but I figured…”

Keiji sighed. He should probably have expected something like this, given the interior snowscape and magical hillside cabin. Honestly, the fault was most likely his own for getting caught up in the what and the how, and not stopping to consider the  _ why _ . It wasn’t even as though the cabin could be mistaken for anything other than a Christmas grotto, if he’d simply stopped for one moment to appreciate its various individual features rather than being overwhelmed by the fact that it existed at all—and in a student apartment, no less.

“Koutarou, is this an extravagant and excessive attempt to convince me of the merits of celebrating Christmas?” he asked, peering sullenly into his long since emptied mug. It had been  _ good  _ hot chocolate, and the fact that it was all gone was frankly a crime.

“I, er...”

“So it is, then,” he said, sighing once more. 

Koutarou didn’t reply. When Keiji risked a glance out of the corner of one eye, he saw his boyfriend watching him nervously. He hadn’t looked so worried since—

Well, to be perfectly blunt, since the Incident at high school. No doubt unless he said something soon Koutarou would start to self-destruct from the anxiety he was creating for himself. 

“I do hope that there are no ghosts scheduled to appear when the bell tolls one, then, because that would rather spoil the atmosphere,” he said. “Considering you already mentioned Kuroo’s involvement, I’m sure you can understand my concern.”

“You…like it?” Koutarou said, brightening. His grin returned in full force when Keiji nodded. “Oh man,  _ of course _ you like it! I did a pretty amazing job, right? And you haven’t even seen half of it yet! Hey hey, now you’ve gotten all warm again, let me put some wood on the fire and I’ll show you the rest. I know you’re gonna love it—I  _ knew  _ you couldn’t really hate Christmas totally, you just never got to have a proper one, but I’m gonna fix that this year I promise, and then we can both love it together!, You wait, this is gonna be the best Christmas ever except for maybe next year if you wanna do it again, because then I wouldn’t have to keep it a secret, you know? It was pretty hard not telling you about anything, and I had to leave a lot ‘til the last minute because otherwise you’d see stuff you weren’t meant to see.”

It was impossible to maintain a steady expression when confronted with the full force of his boyfriend’s near-endless enthusiasm. Keiji could tell the moment his face betrayed him, because Koutarou let out another whoop of delight and lifted him—blanket and all—out of the sofa, staggering back towards the coffee table a little before rebalancing himself and setting Keiji down on the floor again with a gentle kiss to his cheek. 

“This way!” Koutarou cried before Keiji had time to, say,  _ appreciate  _ the gesture, or perhaps return it and suggest that whatever it was could actually wait a little bit, because they were nice and warm, and it had been a long week of lectures and now he’d actually rather appreciate a bit of downtime— particularly if they were going to take advantage of the nearness of the fire, and additional soundproofing which the cabin in the snow presumably provided.

“Wait ‘til you see the  _ food! _ ” his boyfriend crowed a few seconds later, and Keiji amended his previous thought. Perhaps it would be worthwhile seeing what else Koutarou had done after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is actually where I have to take a break for a little bit, because it turns out that when I decided I could write multiple secret-santa fics I hadn't factored in ALL THE MEATSPACE STRESS hitting pretty much at once. I have absolutely started the third final chapter, but if I'm gonna stand any chance of getting my presents wrapped and other commitments tidied away I'm gonna have to finish it up over the next few days instead of say, not sleeping at all for the next 24 hours and then having back-to-back family gatherings for three days.


End file.
